Remove These Barbarians from Our Midst, Pronto!

As usual, some Monday-Morning Soccer Analysts, going by the dubious professional label of “Security Analysts,” were calling the alleged plot to derail the Akufo-Addo Presidency a “premature move” on the part of those diligent and vigilant security forces who promptly moved in to nip this inexcusably barbaric attempt to eviscerate Ghana’s 27-year-old salutary culture of democracy at just about the same time that our country was beginning to firm up its laudable credentials as one of the front-rank civilized, neoliberal democracies in the world. Well, according to Information Minister Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah, the coup-plotters had been steadily working around the clock for some 15 months now, which means that the alleged plot to savagely liquidate the key operatives of the Akufo-Addo Presidency was perhaps hatched well before Nana Akufo-Addo legitimately and democratically assumed the reins of governance on January 7, 2017 (See “Soldiers Mentioned in Alleged Coup Plot Arrested – Oppong-Nkrumah” Yen.com.gh / Ghanaweb.com 9/25/19).

I am also a little bit concerned about the identities of those key players, actually apparent front men who have been, so far, named in most of the media reports. I am especially concerned about a news article – I have yet to read the same – that appeared on several Ghanaian websites with the photograph of arch-Akufo-Addo-nemesis Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe with a caption suggesting that this infamous Trokosi Nationalist Cell Commander had been part of an attempt to overthrow the brutally slain leader of the erstwhile Supreme Military Council (SMC), Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong, and how this attempted putsch had been promptly foiled. Well, as already stated, I have yet to read and digest the full details of the Nyaho-Tamakloe coup plot. Of course, we all know that the Trokosi Nationalist Revolutionaries would eventually move in to savagely liquidate most of the key operatives of the FWK Akuffo palace-coup plotters who had opportunely clipped the overgrown wings of Chairman Kutu-Acheampong, then fast on the road to solidifying his junta grips on the nation in a mold strikingly akin to the template of the late President Kwame Nkrumah and the latter’s fledgling one-party dictatorship of the so-called Convention People’s Party (CPP).

Indeed, there is every hope that the pieces of this allegedly barbaric attempt to liquidate the Akufo-Addo Presidency would fully come together in the next several days or weeks, as the Government has promised to put the alleged criminal suspects before a legitimately constituted court of law in the offing, as stipulated by the country’s 1992 Republican Constitution. In the meantime, what is significant to promptly observe here, so far, according to official information provided by Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah, the subversive activities of the alleged coup-plotters have been closely watched and monitored by operatives of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS), and other allied agencies of the National Security Secretariat, including our National Military Intelligence System.

Contrary to what some self-styled “Security Experts” like Col. Festus Aboagye would have the rest of the nation and the global community believe, our vigilant and diligent national security operatives moved in to squelch this barbaric attempt to regress the country’s clock of socioeconomic and political development, just as the criminal suspects began testing their munitions at various locations that they had established largely within the Greater-Accra Region, although we are also reliably informed that these would-be nation-wreckers had, indeed, began recruiting operational forces from other parts of the country. As the old maxim goes: “We will be studiously watching from the bleachers with the religiosity of avid churchgoers.”

As usual, a deliberate and thoughtful Mr. Oppong-Nkrumah has counseled all patriotic and progressive Ghanaian citizens not to make light of the events surrounding the coup-plotters’ activities on social media. We hope every patriotic and forward-looking Ghanaian citizen is studiously watching.

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

September 25, 2019

E-mail: [email protected]